The Girl who Spoke to Thin Air
by missymoobelle
Summary: GhostAU. SoMa. For the first time in her life, reading a good sized Charles Dickens couldn't block out the bemounings of the shapeless souls that lurk in the corners. But maybe that's because an actual living boy, sarcastic and moody as he was, decided she needed some sunlight, a little teasing, and a lot of help.
1. Chapter 1

**Hullo again! Missy here with breaking news: another multichapter story as well as the pizzeria to look forward to! This is an... I don't even know what to call it. Ghost AU? Supernatural? Well it was inspired by the movie _The Sixth Sense_** **so go google it and see what I mean.**

**Just think about it: Maka is able to perceive souls, right? Isn't that _almost_ the same thing as seeing ghosts? Huh? Let that sink in.**

**She also has big eyes so that kind tie in with the second-sight sort of thing. Spirit is a preist (Lord please forgive me). I don't own anything. _FISHPASTE—!_**

**Enjoy~!**

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Her eyes were huge, widened and alight, like the stained glass they reflected at the alter. Olive green was melting, shattering, caving in all at once; entire worlds were ending and beginning under her damp blonde lashes.

The tablecloth shivered atop of the bench, tormented eyes peeking beyond the white cotton veil she covered herself with; like some sort of angel, or a guilty nun, now that he thought of it. Her trembles escalated further in strength, and the stale night air of the church did nothing to sate the pure energy resonating from her two pools of heated jade. Black oblivion lit by silver moonlight gave life to the glass murals on the walls, casting scenes of biblical tragedy jaggedly across the floor. She lay in stark contrast to the stiff and angled surroundings, fidgeting under the pale lace of a table skirt. Soul felt her to be...alive. He felt humanity.

Oddly, when he approached the girl, the temperature seemed to drop at each step.

Eyes flashed dangerously from her pale hood, and he could hear faint chants in fogged breaths as she continued rocking. It was really too cold in here.

"–said he would be home by seven. It's two thirty. He said he would be home by seven. By seven, he said _by seven and_—"

"Excuse me? Hey girl, you alright?"

"–No no no, _NO_, he said _EXACTLY_ _seven_ and he comes at two thirty. She was angry, really angry. No, said he was a cheating bastard, goddamn cheating bastard no _good_—"

She gasped as if losing her breath, and clutched her head, still steadily rocking back and forth to an unknown melody. Soul fingered his jacket lapel in anxiousness, wondering how to make her listen. Had she come here after a parent's spat? She looked about his age, though. Should a teenage girl take this so hard? Should a teenage girl break into a church and leave him to gape at the double doors ajar in the night and the lock in pieces on the church's steps?

"Hey, take it easy! Don't be so–"

"But why? Why did she have a gun?"

The boy stopped in mid-step.

"She warned him." Her head nodded, and eyes sharpened as if focusing on something in front of her. "She did– yeah, she told him she knew where he hid it. Said-said she hated him staying out late, being away from her. She knew where it was. Top left drawer in the laundry room. Hated it, _HATED IT_, **_HATED_**–"

Soul Evans did not see another being in the room. Her eyes focused further nonetheless. The sheet began to strain under the hold she had on it with her tiny fists, and her voice started to break.

"His name was Thomas. She liked to call him Masie. She called him Masie that night."

Soul found his right foot taking a stride.

"Masie, get your ass over here, get your _GODDAMN ASS OVER HERE_ so we can be together!–she said. _MASIE_, **_MAISE_**!"

His left followed suit.

"Gun was already loaded. No no no...She knew how to, kept it a secret from him cause she knew he would leave her for it. Who wants a wife who knows how to load a _fucking GUN_—"

The echo of fabric tearing ripped through the cold air, and the boy stood over the quivering figure shrouded in white.

"...she put the radio on. Had it on loud, really loud..."

Soul could make out a sniffle, and knelt down to lift the curtain of lace out of her eyes. Immediately, he noted how iridescent they were up close. How did so many shades of green become trapped in them, constantly shifting and shimmering? It was then that he noticed her crying, the glow of her irises caused by glassy tears streaking down her porcelain cheeks. She did not yell anymore.

"No one heard her. Her or...the first round. Or the second, or third, or fifth..."

One single drop landed on Soul's hand, as he lay motionless in front of the girl murmuring quietly in an ivory swaddle.

How did her words become clearer though voiced no louder than a hushed whisper?

"The radio was too loud."

"You're the priest's daughter, aren't you?"

"I– what?"

"You're Maka Albarn. Daughter of father Albarn."

Two more fallen tears was all the reply he was given, and a shaky sigh as her eyes sharpened yet again, staring at the same place behind him as she was moments before. Her shudders began again, though quieter in comparison.

So, that's why she's such a wreck. Earlier that week, he saw her picture hanging at the entrance lobby, where families of those attending were also put up, only noticing it because that's where he waited for his parents and older brother Wes to finish their weekly Mass. Father Albarn always held her to such a high degree of adoration and excellency, claiming to solely live for her and the Lord Himself. God, he thought. How the fuck is he supposed to handle this? It's not like some prank to graffiti up church property like he originally thought, it was a shaken witness who was on the verge of a mental breakdown. What would happen if her father knew of this?  
Soul swallowed the lump in his throat.

Considering himself a calm guy, Soul thought he was handling this pretty well. How could you argue? A horrible crime was committed not just ten minutes ago, and he still had his head and his sense. Plus, cool guys always comfort scared girls, they HANDLE deep shit like this.

Slowly, he took her by her shoulders to steady her somehow, and felt how ice-like her skin was, as well as the rest of the church. Now Soul could see HIS breath.

"He...he died."

"Murder," he agreed.

"No, he _died_."

"Maka, were you there? We're you a witness?"

"He's gone, he's dead. He died on the first round. She aimed for his head–"

"**Maka.** You need to call the police, and tell them. I know it's hard, but you have to take a responsibility and–"

"So why is he here?"

His hands clamped on her shoulders, muscles tensed and red eyes slit in confusion, though her body was lax and like jelly.

"He has five wounds, one in his head, the other on his thigh, another in the ribcage..."

Soul couldn't breathe. Turning around, he saw only the wall behind him and a rosary wrapped around an old nail wedged into the paneling. His breaths still came out fogged.

"...Did he come here because he got scared too? Like me?" Her veil slid down slightly. "Shouldn't the dead have nothing to fear? Shouldn't the dead be laying in the ground somewhere? Not standing, and counting his bullet wounds, telling me how he got them? One in the head, one in the thigh, one in the ribcage, one in the head, ONE IN THE GODDAMN HEAD–!"

"MAKA!"

The blonde girl curled into a tight ball, and violently shook as she spouted indecent images and imitations of the sound of raining gunshots. Looking back again, the rosary still faithfully hanging on a nail, Soul closed his eyes in an attempt to calm himself down. No one was there, it was only them occupying the establishment.

Only them. Only them.

He let out another chilled breath. It was only sixty degrees outside, last time he checked...a warm autumn night.

Pushing wondering thoughts outside, he pulled out his smartphone, slid his finger across the screen and dialed for his brother. Waiting in between rings, he found Maka asleep on the bench, wrapped snugly in the same ball position in her makeshift blanket, snores soft and wavering. When Wes finally picked up, grumpy and not  
in the mood for a little shit of a brother's prank call, Soul tried not to think about the air behind him and how it slightly trembled in the silent hours of the morning. He was alone after all, he assured himself. No need to look back anyways.

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**R&R? Are you guys inetrested to see where this goes? **


	2. Chapter 2

**HEYYYYY-YO! Wassup wassup guys? New chapter for the ghost AU is here! I'd also like to inform you that I'll be working on the pizzeria chapter now, and after it's posted, I'll work on this. Back and forth, like clockwork.**

**Don't own, want to own *your ass*, okay the legal stuff is taken care of.**

**Enjoy~!**

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"I like reading," Maka bluntly informed as she and the curious boy from last night walked briskly in the early fall morning. Leaves of amber and cherry twirled down along the line of trees lining the sidewalk, and had yet to become browned and brittle. The grey sky insulated the chill of the aging year, and served only to make the painted leaves burn brighter against the dull canvas. Soul picked one out of his hair with a frown.

"Interesting," he sarcastically mused. "Go on, won't you?"

Maka did not elaborate, to his relief, which left him alone with his memories of the night before. She had passed out on the bench behind the alter, and he was left to call her father at an ungodly time in the morning. You could imagine the priest's utter horror when he woke up to some boy calling him and telling him to pick up his unconscious daughter, _at three in the morning_. It was when he clarified they were at the church, and she might or might not have had a miniature seizure that Spirit Albarn's rage subsided to a tidal wave of fear.

After a trek to the emergency room and some blood tests the doctor informed the local priest and young Evan's generation that she had not eaten in three days, and was suffering from malnutrition and hallucinations.

It was _not_ a hallucination, however, when Soul overheard of a crazed wife shooting her husband, clarified to be Thomas "Masie" Hampson, five times, occurring around two AM that exact morning. Dubbed the "Masie" case on the Channel Four News, the murder took place all the way across town, in Death City, Nevada. Maka couldn't have run from there to the church in less than ten minutes, not in her condition.

The nurse had to inquire to Soul, when he was gripping on the metal bars to her hospital bed so tight she was afraid he would dent the emergency room's property. He let go without a word and silently tried to focus on the beat of her heart monitor and not how the reporter said in the waiting room how he was crudely shot in the head, in the thigh, and in the ribcage.

Shaking his mop of white hair, he scratched behind his ear and forced himself back to the present. When Maka had woke up and the doctor and her (much relieved and practically on the verge of tears) father insisted she eat breakfast, she agreed, as long as she could eat it in the church. Looking questioningly at one another, they reluctantly agreed.

As soon as she finished her two bowls off Coco Puffs, Maka voiced she and Soul were going for a walk to thank him, as she set her empty bowls on the front steps of the church entrance. And here they were, not one word of thanks exchanged, leaves of fire dancing in their descent to the sidewalk.

Soul was about to question if he could just ditch the "thank you" charade since she obviously wanted to get away from her overprotective father and possibly a mental health survey, until he saw Maka cross the empty street and walk straight to the public library across from them. He could only blink and blindly follow after her.

Opening two cherrywood doors, the strange girl's white dress ruffled with the income of stale (yet tinged with an age much like fine wine) air. Soul wrinkled his nose, unused to the scent, while Maka breezed past the librarian's desk as easily as a phantom would; unnoticed. He guessed this was not the first occasion she had been here.

The pleated skirt of the dress folded underneath her on the chair, yet it's length only allowed it to raise to her mid-calf, as she sat down on a chair at a table, nestled in an abstract corner of the library. The book's dust in the air was welcomed, and the deep red wallpaper was ancient, yet not unappealing. Isles of novels (which later Soul would learn to be located between the religious and fantasy section) surrounded the matching cherrywood table, and a single lamp with a warm, golden glow lit the corner of the premises atop one of the top shelves.

A queer nook is what could accurately describe it, Soul thought. Already opening up a well-worn novel, fingering her wheat blonde hair over her ear, he came to that she and the Shibusen Public Library were well aquatinted.

"I told you I like reading."

" 'Can tell."

"Hm.."

"So, is there anything _else_ you enjoy? Or if your existence is solely for a bunch of rectangles filled with words that collect dust?"

"I also like jolly ranchers."

Here, she paused from her reading and put of her pocket pulled a dozen multicolored hard candies as if the most normal occurrence in the world. Popping a grape into her mouth and crunching enjoyably, she resumed her chapter.

Soul had to hide his growing smile at her cute quirk behind a fake yawn and an uninterested "ya weirdo."

She only flipped a page in reply and continued to read into a sweet paper-binded oblivion. For the first time in a while, Soul felt (just a _smidgen_) self-conscious.

Years of arrogantly wearing his torn jeans at piano recitals, of sitting in the lobby during mass, of being anything _but_ what he was expected of being as an Evans heir, did nothing at that moment. His indifference was tough to act out, though he pulled it off swell in any other situation. Jesus, why was he acting so...

Un-cool?

She was a girl in a dress from the friggin eighteen-hundreds completely content with reading in a dark corner of a shitty community library, and he was the one presence that didn't fit. It's not that it was a new feeling, no, quite far from it; Soul just felt...it's effects for once. Shitty experience, if you asked him.

"So you don't have any questions?" Another page flipped, and her eyes skimming along it at a slower pace, enough for him to know she was listening.

"That depends." He eyed the sole lamp on the top of the nearest shelf. It was made from stained glass, and dusty. What wasn't dusty here anyways? "A shit ton has happened. You'll have to specify."

Onto another page. "About last night. At the church. The hospital. I saw you there."

"Oh."

Wow, that lamp was dusty.

"...You think I killed him, didn't you?"

"Woah, you mean Masie?"

She visibly flinched, and her jade eyes shut as if in physical pain.

"Sorry.." he murmured. The name sort of slipped out without his notice, that's all she called _him_ throughout her night tirade anyways. It stuck. "I wasn't..."

"Don't bother– you act like you're the one skipping your meds. _I'M_ the one who–"

"No, I don't."

Her hand paused halfway through turning her page. Two orbs of crackling green were finally off of her Stephen King and locked onto him.

"You didn't kill anybody, I know that much."

Her eyes were like fireworks, such a reflective shade of green.

"But what _does_ worry me," he continued, leaning on the table with one elbow, its hand cupping his cheek comfortably, "is how you knew the murder case. In detail. That happened clear across town."

"21 Saint Peter's Way." He heard her say under her breath, unconsciously confirming his questions.

"See?" Ruby eyes lit in passion, as they clashed with electric green. Like lighting a thriving tree on fire, energy was resonating between them like the previous night. She was still in white, and Soul's newfound curiosity (as in, developed just _that one instant_, God knows why) getting the better of him. "You're blurting out evidence you were too drugged out to hear!"

The page remained in mid-air, as if she was waiting for something. Her eyes never lost contact with his.

"Listen, I don't know how the shit I'm supposed to handle this. This is weird, YOU'RE weird, I'M normal! I'm cool– stuff like the scene at the church doesn't happen to me."

More silence. He slammed his hand on the table, to hell with the other library occupants! Shit was about to go down if this girl didn't...didn't assure him that he wasn't going _insane_–

"GODDAMMIT! Tried to be chill, TRIED to go to the emergency room like it's fuckin' normal for an exorcist case! You know the goddamn script of a murder, some bat-shit wifey with a gun! How do I know that...that you're not _BEHIND_ it or somethin'?! Do you know how fuckin' scared I was? I thought she was hiding behind the bench with you, ready to shoot her next headliner! I—"

"Can't you feel it?"

Ominous silence followed her standing question, and Soul couldn't explain why he was hesitant to say a quieter, "...feel what?"

"That feeling. You know when you get prickles on your arms, and your back gets goosebumps?" The room grew heavy and the air thick as led, as if the very sound of her breathy voice brought it along. "When you know something's behind you, but you can't turn your head, cause it's behind you anyways. That sinking feeling in your lungs, when you lower your breath...and listen REALLY hard." She took a few herself, calming down and looking back up at his standing form as if her only lifeline in a surging ocean. "That's what you feel."

He nodded a fraction, instead of showing understanding it asking a silent question. The room was so quiet the lack of noise was bouncing off of the walls and ringing in his ears, the old lamp flickering with each beat of his eardrum. Maka's eyes suddenly flickered, and focused like the night before, a ring of iridescent jade flecks boring into the air behind him. The air that held nothing but dust and led-silence. He had to force himself not to give into the urge to whip his head back and look into a bookshelf and possibly an angry librarian wondering what two teenagers were doing alone in a secluded section. What WERE they doing?

"Try."

Soul's head shot up with a mouthed "What?"

"Pull the crap out of your ears and TRY. Stand still and lax your body..."

He did so without thinking, chiding himself for going along with ridiculous orders from a loon in a Victorian nightgown. Upon closer inspection, a puffed-sleeve gown, bunched up to her mid-bicep. From the edge of it and downward, the rest of her ivory skin was clenched into countless white spots, goosebumps raking her exposed limbs.

Her eyes were so bright, and when he looked close enough, could see fine blonde lashes. They shone just as vividly.

Whispering, "Can you feel it?" She looked at him for response. Soul didn't like to admit it but the itch to turn back and face empty air was tempting. That feeling of someone hovering their hand over his shoulder would surely disappear, what with it being unoccupied space and all. But cool guys didn't need to check on anything; they were one-hundered percent sure on everything, their minds prioritized and calm.

So when she asked him that, he ended up saying "Tell me what you're feeling, because I don't know what the hell to think."

"You're hopeless." She nodded sadly at the floor.

"Oi! I wasn't the one who had to take her koo-koo pills at the hospital–"

"IT'S NOT **LIKE THAT**!"

The books rattled in their bindings, and the dusty lamp gave a weak flutter in retaliation. "You don't know anything, anything!" She took her hands in her head, and fingered pale locks as she stared at the cherrywood table and grit her teeth. "Not anything at all..."

Hearing her toes curl against her matching white summer sandals (IT WAS FALL, STUPID he kept to himself), Soul sat back down across from her and relaxed into a thoughtful slouch. He hovered over the table slightly when she started to speak through the curtain of blonde as she still had her head down and hands clutched.

"They think I'm crazy."

" 'Snot like you give them good reason not to."

"Wouldn't believe me anyways."

"With the evidence that holds–"

"So they have the right to stuff pills down my throat and blame it on unstable brain waves? "

"...What if I said, I believe you?"

"Pht. Under what conditions?"

"The ones right now."

She finally looked up, and Soul got another front seat to her speckled eyes, a miniature galaxy trapped behind fluttering lids and flaxen bangs.

"When... I said I liked reading—"

"Oh yes, I remember."

"Ignoring that distasteful commentary, I meant that I _really_ like it. I mean, not for the story, but what it provides? I don't know."

"Since this is your story, I'm a little worried about that."

Fully facing him now, his smirk lined with two rows of pointed teeth and a glint to his sultry eyes, Maka bit down a blush and whipped her hair out of its previous curtain purpose.

"You aren't listening! When I read my stories, they disappear!"

"Who? Your dad?"

"Well, not JUST him! It's...them."

"You're going to have to specify, woman."

"...They're the people in the corners."

"The...corners?"

"Yeah."

This time, Soul couldn't resist looking back at the dark crevice she was previously staring at for the past five minutes of their conversation, and a thin sheen of sweat started to collect on his brow. He soon switched his attention a little too eagerly back to Maka, the way the black of the un-lit ceiling starting to simmer causing his spine to straighten. Trying to ease the dark attention he was feeling from the freakin' PANELING, he ventured, "Interesting. Got a novel you're writing?"

"When I read for a few hours, I can focus and make their voices go away."

Soul gave an internal sigh of relief; On pills, and hearing people inside her head? Schizophrenia possibility? It made sense, at least, and would explain–

"–why I have to wear long dresses."

Uh, what?

One second he's thinking about sating crazies back into their plush bunker rooms, and the next he's seeing Maka lift her long dress skirt over her legs- ahem: MILE LONG ribbons of creamy, unblemished skin, excluding the several crisscrossing scars and burns above both her knees.

Mutely sucking back in the trickle of drool forming from the edge of his lips, Soul ignored the bare thighs of the odd vixen and got the hint that those slashes were too jagged to have been done with a clean razor blade, and that burn marks don't normally come in the shape of **handprints**.

"Holy shit.."

"Yeah, sorry for no warning. I wasn't trying to–"

"Where the fuck did you get those?"

"Haven't...you been listening to me, like at _ALL_? _**CHRIST**_!" She angrily flung her conservative dress pleats downwards, covering up her slightly marred flesh. "**IT WAS THEM**!"

"Who?! Maka– (Wow, it felt weird to say her name. With the exception of the night before, it was a tad uncomfortable rolling off of his tongue) is someone hurting you? Was it the killer from last night? That crazy wife, or–?"

"IT WAS THE **GODDAMN VICTIM**! HE **DID THIS TO ME**, SOUL!"

This time, the whole premises went silent. The decibels of their anxiety made the lamp buzz out, and all that was left illuminated was the filmy grey light leaking in between books from a far-off open window, lighting up his sheer hair and her equally pale cheeks. Surely a furious librarian was soon to follow, but Soul couldn't find himself caring anymore.

Because 'Masie' was shot five times. In the head, in the thigh, and in the ribs. A dead man was scarring this girl in more ways than one, and her glassy green eyes held no deceit or illusion. She was telling the truth.

So the real question is—

"They don't usually do anything physical, but he was just so in shock, and...and angry..."

—does he believe her?

"Maka." Tears stained her lace collar, and she couldn't look him in the eye any longer. Crying openly already tore her tattered pride into tinier pieces, one of the only things she still possessed through the hard years of her childhood. Big, rolling tears streaked down and tickled her under-chin, but she didn't bother to wipe them away. For the first time, Maka wished he would run away right then like everybody else would.

"Do you see...dead people?"

Head slowly rising, and the two familiar rings of jade boring into his awaiting stare, her muteness filled his ears and screamed in the way only the agonizing lack of noise can. The faint smile her pink lips pulled into mocked the emptiness in her voice as he mumbled out, "What gave you that idea?"

The church as her last sanctuary, escaping from a violent, sad man with an even more violent and sad wife.

The long white dresses, the crisscrossed and blotched legs.

The pills. The skipped therapy sessions. The shrinks.

The priest father.

The reading.

The books. Oh God, the books.

"I always kind of liked how this table was placed in between the religion and fantasy sections. It's like a bad oxymoron, or a really good simile. I get the protection of God, and the escape of imaginary worlds and people. They never would follow me here."

Her fucking _books_.

"Excluding today, that is."

"You-you know that guy who used to pick the neighborhood's mailbox locks? The one who used to wear that black beanie?"

The one who was convicted for identity theft and took his old man's shotgun to the mouth when threatened with five years in prison? The headlining story in their home, Death City, for a good month?

Yeah, he knew.

"He says...he hates the way you locked your mailbox with combination locks. He...was caught with yours."

And she ran out in a blur of white and shimmering green, not one for proper goodbyes (or hello's for that matter). Soul rubbed his reddening eyes together, however the tension behind them ceased to wane. This shit morning ended up as a shit day, to his disappointment. Just when she lifted her dress or blushed when she mentioned her jolly ranchers and started to get a _fraction_ of what could resemble "cuteness", some asshole decides to stalk her here and make her freak her living shit out.

Has that been happening often? Dead people just waltzing up to her like they need to borrow a cup of goddamn sugar? Just how far back has this carried on? Why was he so friggin' interested in her pitiful life anyways? Cool guys so did not need chicks with drama in ther schedules. But, even so...

Was he really...the first to approach her?

The sickening pull on his stomach from the thought of her being cut...being BURNED by someone without anybody's knowledge caused him to shove the cherrywood table out of his way, and keep a steady gaze at the exit sign and not the gradually darkening corner in the back and how it's sole attention on him left a tingling at the base of his skull.

~O~

Almost tripping on his way out, he stumbled, cursed, and looked at one of the two sandals Maka was wearing earlier underneath his comparatively larger leather boot. He chose to ignore the annoyed glares the librarian at the front desk shot at him. It's a library, not the effing Albarn's church.

"...Little shit. That. Little. SHIT."

Soul picked it up as if he, a single mother, found a leftover sock in his bathroom. Quickly, he picked up right where he left off, a tiny, white sandal clenched in one hand and the other stuffed deeply in his Harley jacket's pocket.

"Thinks she can walk out crying on a cool guy like me. What kind of man lets that happen? And leaving her shitting sandal too. Who does that, I mean, cliché move Maka. Cliché."

Luckily, finding his runaway Cinderella's location wasn't too much of a challenge, since she's a highly predictable girl who was kind enough to also leave a trail of tear stains and crumpled jolly rancher wrappers for his connivence. This time, Soul didn't bother to hide his smile.

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**R&R to keep me motivated? It works! TwT**


	3. Chapter 3

**AYEEEE YOOOOO~!**

**Maybe this chapter aughts to clear _some _thingsup for you guys! The further chapters will make sense of everything else confusing you.  
**

**And next, the fourth PizzeriaAU Chappie! Aren't I the best updater ever gais *shot in the face***

**Enjoy~!**

* * *

He was taking a leisurely stroll down Death City's main street one day when he saw her again. It was a grey Thursday, the sky a solid canvas of steely clouds whisping into the great beyond and seemingly dying it too with its lack of vibrancy. Looming buildings were washed-out and tired looking, and even the sidewalk seemed to slouch in its endless blandness. Not even the mid-morning traffic found the energy to show up. It was the equivalent of biting into a piece of cardboard; tasteless, plain, unmemorable.

However, among the dull morning scene that rivaled limp, faded newspapers in unattractiveness, he noticed her sitting across the empty main drag of Shibusen Way (same namers of the Shibusen Public Library, go figure) in a familiar white dress and loose wheat blonde hair sitting alone on a bench, occupying the barren city park.

What made it such an unsettling scene was not just her second appearance that same week and her sole occupancy of a perfectly bare city park on a weekday, but the trees. The oaks and maples were a striking source of color, of _vibrancy_, their autumn leaves fluttering in innumerable layers of gold, red, and any shade in between. Staining the gray palate of the overcast sky, they rustled softly in a hollow wind, neither warm nor cold. An ominous breeze is what it was, and it made Soul quicken his pace across the street to her and literally shake off the goosebumps on the back of his neck. Being alone right then just didn't seem to sit well in his twisting stomach, which was oddly calm beforehand.

Come to think of it, as he casually jay-walked towards her idle form sitting with her back to his approaching form, Soul always managed to lose a little of his sacred 'cool' around her. Back at the library, that was the first time he ever yelled at a girl's face. At the church the night prior, that was the only time he held– no, _carried_ anyone so close, so protectively. That woman stole a lot of his firsts, damnit!

Just a few days before when they had their rendezvous at the library, Soul had followed her out with one of her sandals in hand and practically his balls in the other. Taking uncool to an entirely new level, he sought out that she-demon for a good thirty minutes until he finally spotted her in front of the Albarn's church. He also took notice that an enraged Spirit Albarn, his family's priest, was close to busting a vein with the severity of his scolding to her, whom was looking at the sidewalk beneath her feet, too tired to argue back at his spitting accusations.

"Maka, if I've told you once, I've told you a _THOUSAND TIMES_– why would you run away without my permission, AGAIN? And just where the hell is your shoe?! After just getting out of the hospital!"

"You sound like I just came out of rehab, Papa."

"You might as well have! God, Maka. Especially with that...that Evan's boy!"

"Aren't normal girls supposed to hang out with boys anyways? You should be proud–!"

"Proud? **Proud**? This is getting exhausting, darling! You know how much I love you but your patterns are starting to show up again; you're starting to get _bad_ again."

"Maybe I am! Maybe you should _help_ me, Papa! Not just when I'm good, or okay, but when I'm _**bad**_ too! Haven't you been listening to me? At all?"

* * *

_"Haven't...you been listening to me, like at ALL? **CHRIST**!"_

* * *

The guilt in his stomach sunk like an anchor; so he wasn't the first to have ignored her.

"Of course I have, Maka. I listen to you everyday of my life, you know that. But...talking to a victim of a serious murder case, one who is deceased, nonetheless, is not...right!"

_You're not right._

Soul remembered her looking up at that time, and the silent heartbreak of watching the priest walk up the stairs with the silent but sure statement hanging in the air; all without a glance to spare for his daughter.

"...I'm getting tired of this Maka. Just– don't wander off like that, and I'll see you at the prayer tonight. Lord, _please_ be with you."

Father Spirit's harsh statement still rung in Soul's head, and his thoughts were then trained back to the person of interest herself. _Here we go_, Soul groaned internally.

With clenched fists he took a deep breath of stale fall air, willing his breakdown of "why the hell are you always within a twenty yard radius of me's" and "who the shit flashes people their (damn fine) legs and then runs away's" to stay behind razor-edged teeth. Today wasn't a good day to start off with another fight and flight episode, he was ready to face this head on. Weird girls in white with jollyrancher wrappers stuffed in their pockets didn't scare him, no freakin' way. Today was going to be progressive, he was going to understand her, or at least attempt to.

"Can you make up your mind about if you're going to sit down with me or loom overhead like a lost parade balloon? It's rude to do so, jerk."

Soul guessed he can start by acting like a NORMAL guy by not creeping on her from behind like the complete MORON he was. He pinched his nose and managed to sound something not resembling a butt-hurt teenager.

"Sorry, guess I should, huh?" He winded his way around the wooden bench, and sat a respectable distance away from her, stretching his legs and letting his dress shoes sink comfortably into the straw-like grass. His hands, after some careful thought, stayed safely within his suit jacket's pockets. "I have the feeling that a formal greeting won't be necessary considering your sudden bail at the library. So how's it goin?"

Ignoring his question entirely, Maka found a new subject to move onto as she sat just as he first saw her, focused on one of the blazing trees in front of her. "You're dressed awfully fancy. Where did you come from before you came here?"

"Now that wasn't very fair," he smirked. "I ask you a question, but then you ask me one right back?"

"Mine has actual importance."

"So did mine."

"Okay–" her lip lifted in a sort of feral growl, reminding Soul that her face could actually form other emotions than fear or glassy, unfocused thought. "I'm doing fine this morning."

"Is that a lie?"

"Do you think it is?"

"I don't know, seems like."

She sighed and peered into a deep nook on the tree's trunk. "Well, I guess I am lying then."

Soul nodded, and looked at the same tree, not finding anything special about its appearance other than its bright fall canopy. Pushing how cool he sounded just then to the back of his mind, he realized that she wasn't as cloudy headed and active as she was a couple of days ago. Now, she seemed bored and cut off the conversation when she got aggravated. She didn't even bother to spout that random crap about 'shadow people' and her jolly rancher addiction. Did his brushing off of her constant strangeness offend her to that point? Perhaps he took it too far with the "seeing the dead" comment. It merely rolled off of his tongue, completely un-thought through, a mistake! What was he thinking, piecing bits of a broken story together and concluding she was a goddamn ghost hunter?

Maka continued to silently eat his ears out, the temperature-less wind wisping her spider silk hair wherever it pleased. Not once did she move to straighten it or her long white summer dress. Even her flaxen lashes were still as the grave.

Instant regret made his gut plummet even further. Didn't he settle this after the library yelling match? Seriously, what kind of sensible guy blames things he can't understand right off the bat on the supernatural? Last time Soul checked, it was HE who was the sole sane person in his whack-ass rich family. This was supposed to be going differently!

It was a stupid misunderstanding, he concluded, and it helped remind himself of why he was there again, on a bench with that girl in a forest of fire. Soul steeled his jaw and spoke before his pride convinced him to bite his tongue.

"I came from my piano concert."

She turned her head at this, with wide green eyes that made the withering grass beneath their feet thirst with want.

"But I guess you can't call it a concert, since I left before I could start it."

And from there, Soul lamely recounted his day's previous events, how he woke up in a bad mood with a notch in his neck and a recital in twenty minutes. After a lengthy game of "who can chase after their missing sock and big brother's violin bow across a grand staircase the fastest" (God knows his parents haven't ever heard of a simple, un-extravagant one story house), he and the rest of the prestigious Evan's family were packed into their ever-stylish black Lamborghini and sped off to another charity concert his family was holding.

Aside from the stiffs in bow ties and sneers exaggerated with haughty noses held high, Soul supposed it could've been worse. He went on and on about how his aristocratic family didn't care for (or acknowledge, really) his pointedly laid back personality, dark piano solos that couldn't compare to his eldest brother's violin in the least, in fact– they never cared for **him** at all.

So before Soul could've made a fool out of himself under the scorching glares of the spotlight and the audience combined, he turned on the heel of his loafers and got the fuck out of there. The whole "I'm better than whomever is standing three feet away from me" scene was never cut for him anyways. He was sure his brother would somehow manage to clean up his mess with a smile and classical piece from Mozart, and just the thought of it now made him want to laugh and punch someone in the jaw at the same time.

Soul failed to notice during his ramblings, however, how Maka's steady eyes never left his roaming ones, how every time his sarcasm stung from actual hurt and not his snark that she was growing accustomed to hearing from him was being noticed. How he was being noticed.

"Is that why you always sit in the lobby every Sunday?"

Soul sniffed and leaned over his knees, balancing on his elbows. "That's part of it. It's mostly cause I believe in practicing what you preach...literally."

"So, I take it you're an atheist?"

" 'Snot that I don't believe in some big guy out there's holding all the reins, it's just that I don't think we're in his best interests."

"That doesn't excuse it in the least."

Her sullen, yet sharp tone surprised him, and when he moved to look at her again she was back to studying the same knothole of the maple in front of her.

"Making you sit in another room, in a house of _GOD_, nonetheless. And what were you saying? Not supporting your own music, coming from a family of musicians? That's not family; family is a word...too generous to describe them."

Was she listening to him all that time, when he was just complaining about God knows what? Wasn't this supposed to be _his_ interrogation of _her_? This was starting to sound like a bad cop drama. "You know, it's not like I give them much to be proud of. My piano isn't really anything to–"

"But it's yours."

Soul lifted a silver brow. "Pardon?"

"It's your music Soul." She turned her head to face him straight on, with shoulders square and eyes honest and sure. "It doesn't matter what it sounds like, or how you play it. I don't listen to a lot of music, so I'm no high-end critic, but some understandings are just universal. Songs are used for expression, and you have every right to tell that audience who _you_ are and _how **you** feel_."

Her eyebrows creased thoughtfully, as if she really meant what she was saying. "You're important, Soul."

The slight pinking of his cheeks was distracting him from replying to her conclusion. Just why the shit did he and crazy-Sue over there switch places as the therapist? Just where was the shivering girl with bruised knees he witnessed at the library? There wasn't anything like that sitting in front of him; this girl had a firm jaw and a chin held high. Her hair didn't cover her face limply but instead swayed gently in the lukewarm breeze. This girl's green eyes did not stare focused into dark corners; they were alive, defying earthly forces and encasing the entire universe in their jaded irises. Looking at her was like plunging into an ocean and finding yourself right-side up somewhere else.

"What happened to you?"

A fitting question, they both mused.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but guess I met you."

"Glad I made some sort of difference." he managed to choke out, hough the flattery was evident in the genuine lift of his lips.

Maka hummed in reply as her dulled flaxen hair slipped off of her shoulder and hung on the right side of her face. Out of instinct, he almost wanted to reach across and push it back over. Opening and closing his hands to rid himself of such a creep-tastic thought, he attempted to open a new window to the lull in their conversation.

"So...uhm, about the thing at the library–"

"Wow, and here I thought you just wanted my company."

"I DO! It's just that, what happened back there..."

"Happened. You saw for yourself, right?"

"What I really wanted to say, at that time I mean, was–"

"That I was crazy?"

"SHIT WOMAN, LET ME _SPEAK_ FOR TWO MINUTES!"

She crossed her legs haughtily (when did she start acting so stubborn?) and with impatience written all over her idle blink, allowed him to do just so. Two minutes wasn't that long of a wait, anyways.

Scratching his head, he prayed that he could find the right words to express his curiosity and confusion, lest his lack of verbal communication get the better of him like it did in his childhood days of agonizing piano lessons.

"I...believe you."

The lazy bat of an unconvinced eyelash silently allowed him to go onward. Soul both thanked and damned it.

"I believe that you, yourself, are having these experiences. What I'm having trouble wrapping my brain around, is that they are actually..._occurring_."

"You think I'm being honest with my explanations," she summed up, "but they aren't truly happening in reality."

The dulled acceptance under her blonde bangs made his stomach twist; she was prepared for this. She was ready for another doctor to prescribe her, another friend to turn away from her, another book to close.

From that moment on, Soul made it a pact to prove her wrong.

"When I was little, my parents had me enter into the family music business, as a pianist. And during my lessons, I never played what my instructor asked me to."

To make all assumptions of her a myth.

"Whatever I wanted to play was disturbing, and dark. They wouldn't let me play for weeks after one song."

He was going to find out who that girl was, the one before the scarred knees and long dresses.

"You should never be punished for being yourself."

Damn, her eyes were **green**.

"I can tell you that much."

"...You're giving me mixed signals, here." Yet her watering eyes held a strong gaze, one of a courageousness he wanted to know better. "Are you signing up as my shrink or something?"

Pawing at her lace-trimmed dress skirt, Maka couldn't help but bite her tongue that her throat was choking on; her overflowing hope was filling her stomach and weighing her to the bench, a sickening and beautiful thing all at once. She didn't care that he sat out of church anyway. He was here at the park on a bland Thursday morning, that was all the attendance she needed.

"I think I would fit under the category of 'friend' better," he said as he not smirked, but smiled. "But I think it also entails 'therapist' somewhere in the fine print."

His hand, dexterous pianist fingers encasing smaller, milk white ones, smothered hers as her tears stained her lips and dropped from her chin. This time, she too smiled back, her crying one of another emotion altogether.

"I wouldn't know," she sniffed. Hastily, she wiped all evidence of sincere relief with her long sleeve of a white-as-snow winter gown. Her eyes never changed. "So then, can we start our first therapy appointment? I wanna stop seeing the dead as soon as humanly possible."

Soul unlaced their fingers with enough coolness to spare, or else God let him crawl his way to a one way Subway trip to Pussy-ville, and mumbled, "My Pop has some blank tapes, so I thought we could record these...conversations we've been having. Listening to the past helps me figure out my present, like with old piano recitals and stuff? Helped me with some of my songs."

"That's oddly deep of you, Soul."

He scoffed, crossing his ankles and leaning back on the bench. "How would you know? How long have we been together?"

Wow, he told himself. Double fucking meanings much? Try not to blush too hard, she'll think you're having a goddamn fever.

"You're right. We should fix that." Maka readjusted herself, facing the way he was, legs crisscross and long dress midway up her thigh. He needs to remind himself that the tree in front of him is the center of his attention. "I tell you one secret, and you tell one next. Maybe I'll be promoted to _best_ friend," she said as her eyes shone.

"Deal."

"But I get to go first!"

"Be my guest, 'malady."

"Cut the sass, shark-bear. Also, our 'priest' is a certified man whore. And a cheat."

Passing him a grape Jolly Rancher, she continued as she unwrapped a cherry and let it clack against her teeth idly.

The forest continued to burn, gold and red engulfing the gray sky in the flame of fall. The flame of change.

* * *

**Didja like it? Hate it? Want to challenge it to an arm wrestle? Please R&R for me then! PLEASEPLEASE_PLEASE—!_**


	4. Chapter 4

**OHOHOHOHO LOOK WHO FINALLY UPDATED HER SHIT.**

**My sincerest apologies little muffin children, I had a horrible writers block and thankfully crawled out from under it! After I post this I will write another Pizza!AU chappie as I always do, not to worry. All I can really say right now is to forgive me again for my absence and PLEASE R&R AFTER READING! THEY MAKE MY DAYYY3**

**Enjoy~!**

* * *

"So, is someone here? Maka, I need you to answer me. _Maka_."

"I heard you the first time Soul!" she snipped, well aware of her lack of response. He learned over this past week's tape sessions that Maka had a strange way of responding; one day she could leave him silently in awe with her silver tongue, and the next begging to hear at least a word uttered from her sewn lips. Today was starting off in the latter way, and Soul knew from the days beforehand that progress would have to be worked for.

Well, he paused, it hadn't _actually_ began as a meticulous meeting. Maka had come in another variation of her long, white sundresses with a miniature box of doughnuts bought from the 7-Eleven around the corner, just a block west of the public library they both agreed to hold said therapy sessions at. Or, as she put it ever so eloquently, their 'weekly psychiatric discussions of the paranormal'.

It was normal for the most part. Meet in between the fantasy and religion sections, sit at the old table with the flicker-y lamp, and sneak some heavenly glazed snacks here and there while recording their 'discussions' on Soul's tape-cassettes. With a click of the _record_ button and a new bag of Jolly Ranchers, and they were off with their many discussions. Soul's theory was to ease her into the touchy subject of her...problem. Beginning with last night's biased judgment on college basketball or his private school's useless uniform code he chose to ignore, Maka would gladly engage in their witty commentary on suburban life in Death City . Topics never touched deeper than that. Until today.

They were right in the middle of a heated debate on superior doughnut toppings when Maka quieted and dropped the subject entirely. Now knowing how stubborn of a girl she was, Soul found it off-putting for her to hand him the conversation in defeat. It was her that usually bested him in wordplay, and naturally he offered a lazy sounding, "What gives?" to the air between them.

And then he noticed.

Maka's eyes were no longer the flat, glassy sheen of moss they were previously; they had dilated, the green sharpening to that of neon, crackling electricity, with a sharp pupil piercing through their center. Her eyes, so focused and enraptured, concentrated on a sole chair across the aisle, sitting in abandonment.

Body rigid as the energy flowing through her irises, she was stiff as a corpse in her white gown. Her wheat hair was loose again, and a few flaxen strands kissed the front of her cheeks as she let them slip from their place behind her ear. Soul's eyebrows creased in thought, and his voice came out tense from the silence that the tape dutifully preserved.

"You seem to like to stare at nothing at times. Just a few days ago you were eyeing that corner over there. Now, it's that chair," he pointed to it unabashedly, and she flinched as he did so. As if she were waiting for a reaction from across that dark aisle, from that shadowed, empty chair. "Are you afraid of the dark, Maka?"

Staring straight across from it, her gaze did not waver, nor did her quietly solemn voice as she responded, "Not so much the dark, but who's inside of it."

She then started to massage her knees, an instinctual stress induced habit she tended to act out. Soothing the healing scars left from "Masie's" attack, Maka replaced the (unexplainable, according to her doctors) palm-shaped burns with the caresses of her own. The dress would crease, but Soul could tell she couldn't care less right then. Eyes wide, back straight, and hands rolling over her kneecaps, Maka looked like the definition of _anxious_. The lamp gave a weak flicker, agreeing with her fearful response, and Soul couldn't find it in him to look twice. The chair's shadow stretched along the carpet, consuming the walkway as it looked onward blindly. Darkly. Motionless, while Maka was almost vibrating; they held a stare-down that Soul all but avoided engaging in. Because he shouldn't have to, there was just a chair across the aisle.

"Tell me Maka," he struggled to piece the words together, "what's sitting there, in the dark? What's making you look so scared?"

Now clutching white fistfuls of her cotton dress, her knuckles turned to match its color and began to breathe shakily. It didn't matter how tight her toes curled into the carpet, how harshly she bit her lip, or how encouraging her aloof friend's surprisingly open face was; she was losing control again.

"The man sitting in the chair."

"What man," Soul urged on. "I don't see any man in this wing of the library."

Chewing her lip to prevent any foul language from bursting out of her ready mouth, she settled for a burning glare at the invisible man occupying the lonely chair with its ominous shadow stretching towards them as an invitation for something unsaid.

"Of course you wouldn't. That's why we're here, you idiot."

Soul still wondered why her pupils would dilate into a cat-like focus only when there was nothing to look at. Surely a person was there, lest her bruised knees and night terrors digress, and Maka, of all things, was not a liar; he just needed to learn how to find the people made from _atmosphere_ for Maka's sake, for her father's sanity, for numerous reasons.

"Point taken, and I could do without your sass, lady. Tell me more about the man there, seeing as there's something wrong with my eyes."

But how could he, when there were so many other factors put into play? Could he properly explain his doubt towards the hallucinations he was actually saying he believed? Every day with her was another weight to add to his shoulders of telling her she had his full trust. Soul's promises of justice, of exorcizing this 'curse' from her, rung distant and taunting in his psyche. Not liking to linger on the subject, Soul nevertheless pondered if all of these late night library meetings and stacks of tapes recording their banters and ramblings of _the silliest topics considering the actual purpose of their sessions and some of the most humiliating snorts Soul has let slip from his nose_–

Ugh. Dammit.

"...He has a black hat on, wide brim. A grey pea coat with pockets he keeps on picking in with his hands, and corduroy pants."

Running a hand through the unruly white hair he had forsaken brushing that morning, he peered thoughtfully at Maka's electric green eyes, and the freckles speckled fondly upon her cheeks. Instead of inspecting the empty furniture in question, or deciphering the reason why she had broken out into a cold sweat in a room of 75 degrees during a rare warm autumn day, or even _why_ she was wearing one of her long, stuffy, white dresses stolen from Queen Elizabeth's closet as faithfully as the weeks before, Soul's thoughts, his stare, and interest all but stayed on the girl who spoke to thin air.

"Uh huh."

"He also has no eyes; they're just these black, bottomless holes that are... looking at me."

It had been that way since they met at the park with trees made of fire, when he noticed her eyelashes were as blonde as her silken hair, how her fat ankles were sort-of endearing, and the way her no-nonsense attitude rose when she wasn't riddled with episodes of ghost scares and hand-shaped bruises. Let's face it; Soul wasn't in this whole after school therapy business for the sake of paranormal investigation for the greater good of mankind. He got stuck in this shit because a titless bookworm, who could tell him his piano solo was far superior to any older brother's violin concert and _mean_ it, was about to be put in a loony bin because of something she couldn't control. Whether that be an over active imagination or a portal to the spirit world, Soul really didn't elaborate on. Maka was too important to lose.

Though he thoroughly refused to accept it, Soul fell for the courageous girl that lay hidden behind the skirts of a white dress. The one who once had a proud Papa she was ashamed of getting dropped off at school by, and got upset when she lost her neighborhood's basketball games time and time again, and used to volunteer at the same library as a shelf stocker just to read _that_ much more each and every week. The one he missed out on seeing, but ended up falling in love with in the end.

Soul would be the only one to make her come back again, not to him, (for she already had, every single day they met to his growing pride) but to the people who missed her.

Help.

"Soul...I'm scared.

He would _help_ her.

"Alright–!" Soul stated. His chair shot back and made a dull thump against the bookshelf behind him. Getting up, he pushed away from the table they sat at and began to pace about the dark nook of the library. "Does Mr. No-Eyes have a name?"

He was walking up and down the neighboring aisles now, but Maka did not hear his hurried footfalls, too focused on the chair and how she swore the shadows of its legs were slowly dragging towards her. Offhandedly she muttered a quiet "Borris"

"Well then, BORRIS," her gaze was broken by a flying book, though oddly not aimed for a head; it harmlessly dropped in front of her, spine and cover facing conveniently up. "Take a good look at that."

She did in fact, and managed to rip her eyes off of said invisible offender and read the title. Printed on worn red fabric, cursive gold lettering spelled out _Anne of Green Gables_, glittering in the yellow lamplight. Soul stepped forward and continued.

"That there is a classic L.M. Montgomery novel, about a red-headed orphan named Anne. She had this really cruddy life, see? Always babysitting, taking care of houses, getting all the chores nobody wanted to do, Anne had jack-shit growing up.

But one day, this old couple hires her as a farm hand, and her life gets better– the couple learn that she's an amazing poet and she can create beautiful images with just words, and that all she really wanted in life was to be close to people and for them to accept her awkward physical appearance, cause she sure as hell didn't. Anne was just a lonely girl with pigtails who liked to read, that's what was so amazing about her I guess. Her endurance and limitless love for life."

Considering where Soul's manual was, and if she had to possibly send him back to his manufacturer_because there was no way in high heaven that Soul Evans could construct a sentence so feminine and articulate and so much like how she would confess her love to her all-time favorite book series_, Maka had to remember to blink and rehydrate her non-believing eyes.

"Maka read the entire book series in a week, and re-read it a total of six times, this being her seventh." With a pointed look at the empty chair, Soul turned right around and began walking down a different aisle in haste. Now Maka was the one concerned for her friend's sanity, not that she had even lost her own to begin with, of course. Soul made it a point everyday they met that she was not a nutcase.

To finish her internal statement, Soul provided, "No, she's a girl. A person. A person who likes John Steinbeck." The ratty red book he had previously dumped on the tabletop met another one in the same fashion it was thrown. Landing in an awkward heap lay _Of Mice and Men_, front and back covers spread in a split that made her itch for proper book treatment spread down to her twitching fingers. Did he really have to prove a point by maiming all library property within his reach?

"This mentally retarded dude Lenny and his loyal caretaker George look for jobs during the Great Depression, and they just try to find work and deal with their forms of isolation from the world. Maka adores how outspoken Curly's wife is, cause apparently wanting to be a successful actress earned you the title of _town whore_ in the old west."

Frustrated at his inexplicable knowledge of her psyche she exclaimed, "What in the hell are you trying to get across Soul–?"

"Woman, I know it's a hard task to do but PLEASE- indulge me this once and let _me_ speak."

A huff was all the retaliation he received. "Well," she crossed her arms, also stopping that worrisome habit of scratching her knees that Soul came to loathe, "I shall let you indulge, then."

And _WHAM_, another book topped the pile of abused literature in front of her, equally old and shabby with a familiar, constant use. That would add up to be her third favorite story that took flight that day. With a saucy smirk to level her look of awe (or was it agitation?), Soul blandly called out the title _The Disapparation of James._

"Borris, my semi-good man, this would be one of the best reads in my life. Makas the one who suggested it to me, actually. During one of our sessions here, she kept on raving about this one book she just finished the night before, and how I should introduce some actual culture not including my 'damn jazz junk written on used napkins' into my life. I hate to say it, but she really was right about it– 'snot like she's wrong about much of anything, anyways."

Green eyes gave him a look in between ready snipers and a low lying eagerness, subtle and patient. Somehow he liked both of them on her. She just wanted him to stop stalling and tell her and Borris the rest of what she thought of the book, so hopefully she could disagree with it and assure herself that hey, this showed her for believing in a fantasy where some shark-toothed guy who sulked in the lobby of a church could actually understand her.

"Are we reaching the point of your ridiculous montage yet Soul?" She bit her lip and willed herself not to smile, thanking whatever powers that may be for hiding the one forming in her voice. "You're ruining library property."

Instead of the sarcastic explanation she was expecting, Soul turned to the chair at the end of the aisle, and stared.

He did not break his gaze, red and iridescent as a glowing charcoal in black ash, though Maka knew he saw nothing. Of course he didn't. No one ever did, and that's what she'd always had to prepare herself for. Soul was looking at an empty wooden furniture piece in the dark, yet she saw a man with no eyes beckoning her into the shade, the abyss of Borris's stare making the healing scratches on her knees burn.

So, she wondered, why did he start speaking to him? Why was Soul going through the trouble of making a fool out of himself?

"Because, Maka, I can see him too."

Her head spun as she looked up at him, a trademark smirk stretching across his face, as sure and welcoming as she remembered it was. Though she wished to return such a soothing gesture, her outright confusion, more so doubt, ceased any attempt.

"You think so hard that I can hear your headache, pigtails. And I thought you would ask me that anyways." A raspberry was blown his way and he commended her on that unrelenting stubbornness she always held. A living nightmare she was continually forced to live through terrorized her, her vision, her mind, and ones she had tried to reach out to, and still Maka found it in herself to show what true courage really was and throw his snark right back at him.

And with his heart beating in time with hers, Soul broke down his first wall and spoke the truth.

"Borris, you may not know this but Maka had a life before she could communicate with people like you. She loved to read books, like her favorites I just laid in front of you, and loved her Papa, and probably a lot of other things I missed out on because _yeah_, that was _her_ life. _Her_ childhood._Her_happiness. And you stole that. That's what's completely unacceptable.

Sure, I may not physically see you, I can't hear your whispers and feel your presence, but I know Maka does. The fear and pain is there, just like her bravery is. Out of these experiences Maka has become clever enough to get through school, divorce disputes, and so many other things appearing to be perfectly fine. That I _know_ is not fake, it's just as real as you are. So dude, you're done visiting her. I'm going to be her company from now on, and you go on and tell the others to fucking scram too."

And at that moment, a figure cloaked in black appeared in the chair, just as nondescript and subtle as a shadow swiftly passing in light. Stunned into silence, Soul could only try to make out the wispy figure that blended into the air, but it was hard to decipher the shape of the (man, was it?) from the shifting darkness in the crevice the chair and him sat in.

Soul did recognize a wide-brimmed hat along with large buttons on the body, much like how a pea coats were. However, it was the two distinct black holes on what resembled its face that struck him hardest, placed right where its eyes would have been. In a malicious manner both pools of nothingness quivered in a sick delight, as if it was smiling at a secret it intended to keep.

The steadily flickering lamp finally shorted out in a crescendo that sent a cloud of silver dust flying in the completely darkened room. Borris smiled, with a set of crooked yellow teeth glowing in the unlit room that both Maka and Soul were lured to.

"You're in deep _now_ boy, this girl will devour you whole."

The voice was sinister, and like a silk ribbon slipping between his fingers and onto the floor. Barely spoken above a whisper yet clear as day, Soul never got the chance to clear the lurking shadows in his mind before some other person occupying their wing of the library lifted the shade of a nearby window, golden sunbeams of a fruitful autumn afternoon illuminating the aisles. There, an empty wooden chair lay, friendly and quaint in the light. Footsteps approached it and soon an aged librarian flitted past, bracelets jingling when placing a couple of books into the shelves nearby. With a clinical nod to them both, she walked off out of sight.

Though he was still shaken Soul hit the stop button on the tape recorder. He took out the tape and stuffed it in his black and yellow letterman jacket pocket, planning to listen very carefully to it later.

Before he could rub the back of his neck to clear any leftover goose bumps, because he literally just saw fucking Borris tip his cap and sit and talk like it was a normal occurrence, Maka laid her head back in her chair and laughed.

Laughed.

Knees up and toes curled into her hippie sandals, she smiled with mirthful eyes shining in the warmly lit nook, letting laughter bubble up from years and years of holding happiness inside, for fear of letting it get squashed by life.

Unable to stare dumbly any longer, Soul debated whether to ask if she saw what he just did, because in no possible way was that remotely funny to him, or if it was just natural for her to giggle away her fears. Though, Maka looked no more scared than the librarian did. Dare he say it, she looked relieved.

"What?" she giddily asked in between breaths.

"I was going to ask you if you thought I was crazy, but I don't think a therapist is allowed to ask his patient that."

"Shouldn't I be asking that?" Smiling, she rose from her seat and picked up the three novels sitting in a heap on top of the table and carried to him, gently pushing them into his arms held out in question. Seeing the confusion in him that she felt countless times before, Maka understood. The double take, the denial, the last-minute reasoning Soul was experiencing gave her something she thought she lost: her hope. With the most understanding look she could give him, she let him know that all was okay; the worst part was over for now, and that she indeed never thought twice that he was crazy. She was just giving back to Soul what he had given to her, for once.

"Besides, I'm not your patient, I'm your friend."

Her still glittering eyes and firm smile brought one on his own face, and he took the books with a sure grasp. Things were getting better. "Then you have got to be the coolest friend I have, Maka. Even though you read too much."

"I don't read too much, you just don't read at all!"

"Yeah yeah, just save it. I have twenty dollars in my pocket, and since this session's progress was pretty freakin' great, I'll treat us to a Chinese take-out tonight. Think we deserve it?"

"If you're going to Coldstone for dessert, I'll take your entire offer, sir." And with a skip to her step and a twirl of her white dress, Maka made her way to the front doors, weaving in and out of the maze of bookshelves as Soul faithfully followed.

Devour him? On that note, Borris's words struck true. Soul was all but putty in this feisty, friendly, wonderfully weird blonde's grasp.

~O~

{One Week Prior}

"_Soul, are you even listening?" Maka nagged, poking his arm with the eraser of her pencil. Merely groaning in return, he adjusted his chin held by a palm, leaning sleepily over the table in the tiny nook of the library they had been using for their sessions. Angered that he was falling asleep during an important point she was trying to make, she picked up one of the many books scattered on the table and held it over his mop of white hair, letting it drop with a __**thunk**__ onto Soul's head._

_Knocked from his perch on his hand, he slammed into the flat wooden surface with the deadweight of drowsiness adding to the pain of the collision. "YOW!" He exclaimed, "That HURT, freakin' CHRIST!"_

"_Then maybe now you'll pay attention to what I have to say," she explained with a huff. "I was really getting somewhere! And I don't like repeating myself, Soul."_

_Mumbling under his breath, Soul sat up and rubbed his abused skull with a scowl. Razor edged teeth did not make Maka falter in the least; they never had been able to, actually. He meant no more harm to her than the short-fused lamp did flickering beside them, and this Maka knew from the start of seeing the Evans boy. So instead, Soul had to actually communicate, instead of using his unusual appearance and sour disposition to make people understand what he wanted, and that was the hardest part of his position as her, ahem, therapist._

_And that night, he agreed to meet her off schedule to discuss something she thought was completely necessary to. Little did he know he would arrive there to find her among an entire metropolis of books, stacked in buildings __**in blocks **__**in neighborhoods **__of various novels pertaining to every subject man had created. _

_First, she had beckoned him to maneuver around the piles of books she had pulled out from different sections of the library, or all of the library it seemed, and join her at the tableside (which was also littered with books, dear God). Unknowing of the serious boredom-induced coma to come, he foolishly accepted and sat beside her while she began opening up a collection of classical poetry, explaining to him the excellent use of imagery or something along those lines._

_It turned out that Maka had something to say about every book, and he meant __**every**__ book, occupying their nook. She liked to randomly read through thesauruses and learn facts of all sorts, from the Pacific Ocean's number of whale specie to the formation of black holes in deep space. Dictionaries helped brush up on her spelling and understanding of weird words, like nudiustertian meant the day before yesterday? What? Or, how Gone With the Wind was her most cherished romance tale, and she admittedly had a crush on Rhett K. Butler, though it dissolved over the years. _

_The first ten of them he managed to listen to, but as the number of speeches increased and his attention span decreased, the lull of her soft, yet strong voice soothed him into a nice nap. Until a very large book spine and the hard table top woke him up, that is._

"_You are the absolute worst," she muttered as she shook her head, clearly aggravated that he had not been taking her seriously._

"_Maka, aw come on, it's not my fault you want to read to me the entire library in one night!"_

"_Will you stop making ridiculous excuses already?" Maka countered. "This actually matters to me, Soul!"_

"_What? Reading dictionaries word for word? Pigtails, no offense, but that makes watching wet paint dry on a wall seem fun."_

_Soul watched her face redden smugly, and as her frustration grew so did the blush spreading across her pale collarbone, that which he followed hypnotically._

"_People like you won't understand! Look, this may seem like a waste of time to you but this holds __**value**__ in my life! And-and when I'm trying to reach out to you, and trying to let you know how happy this makes me feel, has always made me feel- and then you fall asleep and make fun of it and act like it's a waste of t-time…"_

_Immediately he stopped his teasing glances and took notice that she was close to tears, blushing from how upset she was and looking straight at him with the most disappointed face anyone had been able to pull on him, one that put his parent's at skipped piano recitals to shame. Wringing her white dress to get a grip on something that wasn't his neck, Maka closed her eyes and let out one shaky breath._

_Yeah, he fucked up._

_He got up and approached her, kneeling and delicately holding each of her shoulders in his hands, willing her to look at him again, tears be shed or not._

_Eventually, two emerald eyes appeared under curled blonde lashes, watching him through that strange haze they have always held._

_"I'm sorry, Maka. That wasn't cool of me to say."_

_She felt his calloused thumb rub thoughtfully into her shoulder blade, which did in fact make her feel a little better along with his short, but genuine apology. That's the kind of guy he was, she guessed, lacking as much in speech as he did empathy, but a truly nice person underneath._

_But that was still a dick move he pulled._

_"That was still a dick move you pulled."_

_"I know, I know" he smirked. "Surprised I didn't get another chop, actually."_

_Maka was too, why didn't she give him a good novel to the cranium? In deep thought she let his statement hang in the air around them, Soul still crouched in front of her and her dainty hands lying comfortably on top of his, drumming to the rhythm of nothing. Trying not to think about how soft her palms were, and how her completely conservative and totally unappealing dress with what little lace and frill there was elegantly framed her neck and collar._

_"I guess it was because I shared some of the blame too."_

_Blinking, he looked back at her as cue to continue._

_"I mean...it's late already, and you're probably sleepy. It's also off our usual schedule, so I guess you weren't really expecting to get yelled at by me for an extra day." After she finished she smiled, as if knowing she was a burden, a PMS machine gone crazy._

_On a mission to set something right, Soul countered her claims. "Okay, sure this was a little unexpected, but that didn't give me the right to hurt your feelings."_

_"No, it didn't. You were being an ass then."_

_"ALSO, you don't always yell at me, half the time I need to be put in place. And I'm cool just chilling here with you; you're the nicest company I've had in a while."_

_Nodding, Maka stayed quiet, content with reconciling with him. He always did have this strange calming effect on her._

_"Hey Maka, I wanted to ask you something."_

_Of course at other times he was just asking to be thrown out of the nearest window._

_With a sigh, she answered a polite enough, "Yes, Soul?"_

_"Why did you want to tell me about all these books? You just told me they all are really important to you and I get that, but why exactly? Do you just like reading that much?"_

_"Oh," she pondered. "Never thought you'd ask me something like that off the clock. Wouldn't you like this to be recorded?"_

_Eyes playful, he simply responded, "Friends ask questions too, I'm not always your shrink."_

_Maka covered her smile with a hand out of modesty, his honest answer causing a strange sort of happiness to bubble in her chest. Wanting to return the favor, she began to answer his inquiry._

_"When I started seeing the souls of those passed from the living realm, I first did not find an escape. They were just there. Everyday, at any hour, I could hear them speak in my ear, touch my hair, pull at my legs. It was a nightmare._

_One day Papa offered me the Sunday Comics from his newspaper, and so I took it and read out of boredom. But I soon discovered that when I read, the voices stopped. I could read the Pearls Before Swine panel again and again, with no interruption. I was given the gift of isolation."_

_Pausing, she watched Soul carefully, she decided that no, he was not falling asleep this time and yes, she could continue speaking with an active listener._

_"...Books can transport you, you know. Inside them are entire worlds to get lost in, worthwhile people to follow, cheer on, to cry for and cry with. There might be mountains to climb or ships to sail, you can belong to a family and live with new siblings, and you experience what the protagonist goes through. You can live wherever, whenever, and however you want; you can transform your entirety. The ultimate freedom is in a book, and I've lived a prisoner for too long."_

_Soul took in her words thoughtfully, and admired how at times she sounded like a narrator to her own story. Funny, how much she took after her own beloved hobby._

_"What are your favorite books, then?"_

_"Mine?" She lifted a finger to the center of the table, where three books laid in a simple fanlike pattern. There they read Anne of Green Gables, Of Mice and Men, and The Disapparition of James. "Those over there. I was going to save them for last, but you were barely conscious even halfway through my speech."_

_"What's so special about them, then?"_

_"You'll have to read them and find out."_

_"What?" He whined, aghast at reading not one, but THREE novels. "Why don't you just tell me? That's easier."_

_"Life isn't easy Soul."_

_"Bullshit, you just want me to do something productive."_

_"If you really want to understand me better," gesturing to the novels with a nod of her sandy blonde hair, Maka concluded, "then start crackin' those spines shark butt."_

_After a glance towards their direction and back, Soul shook his head and lay back in his chair, using his shoe against the bottom of the table to prevent from falling backwards, his arms crossed behind his head. Distractedly he murmured, "As if that'll ever happen."_

* * *

**CAUGHT YOU! I bet you really want to review this now that I've reminded you, huh? *awkwardly winks and trips***


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